I had never seen Kristen without an answer. In eleven years of Sunday dinners, she had met every difficulty with a brisk smile and a plan. But now, in the quiet of that kitchen, with the rain tapping on the skylight and the dog whining at the back door, she looked at the deed in the hands of her own mother, and I watched the smile come apart in pieces. “Ernest,” said her mother, Barbara Sheehan, again, “are you the new landlord?” I said, “I am, Barbara. In September, I sold Granite State Signs to a national company for five million four hundred thousand dollars. In October, I bought this house through Granite Holdings. Your daughter and your son in law are my tenants.”
Barbara closed her eyes. Her husband Frank, a stout retired electrician, said nothing for a long moment. Then he said, in a voice that had gone very dry, “Kristen, did we give you money for a car?” Kristen said, “Dad.” He said, “I asked a simple question.” Kristen said, “No.” The word hung in the air above the corn and the lobster rolls. Mike, my son, had gone entirely still. He is forty two, a mild, absent minded engineer, who has always trusted his wife more than he trusts his own reading of a map. “Kris,” he said, very softly, “you told me the car was your bonus.”
I took the check from the envelope and laid it by his plate. Number 3312. Fourteen thousand dollars, to Nashua Toyota, signed with my name in a hand that was not mine. “I looked at the bank records,” I said. “Six other checks, over eleven months. Twenty nine thousand dollars, with this one. All signed Ernest Pelletier. All written from the checkbook I gave to your wife, to pay my bills, in the belief that she was a careful woman.” I looked at Kristen. “I do not say she is a bad woman. I say she was a frightened one. It takes a frightened person to think a forged check is the same as a loan.”
A forged check written to a car dealer brought a retired electrician to a lobster roll supper and gave one sign painter the night to bring his family back to the table.
Kristen burst into tears. It was a loud, wrenching sobbing, the kind that comes when a dam has held too long. “Ernest,” she said, “I am so sorry. Mike lost his raise last year, and we did not tell you. We fell behind on the mortgage, and the property tax, and the bills at the dentist for the kids. I kept thinking, I will fix it, I will fix it.” She pressed her napkin to her face. “And then it was easier to take the next check than to confess the last one. It happened so fast. I did not see myself turn into this.”
Mike put down his corn. He took the hand of his wife across the table, which I thought was brave of him, and said, “Kris, why did you not tell me?” She said, “You would have been ashamed.” He said, “Of what? Of us?” She nodded. He looked at her for a long time. Then he turned to me, and I saw that his own eyes had filled. “Dad, I did not know. I swear to you. I would have taken a second job. I would have sold the house. I would never have let her take from you.” I said, “I know, Mike. I have never doubted you. I doubted only the arithmetic.”
Frank Sheehan cleared his throat. “Ernest,” he said, “we will repay you. Every dollar. Barbara and I have a little set aside, and I will cash it out tomorrow.” I held up a hand. “Frank, no. Your money is not the debt. The debt belongs to the people who wrote the checks.” I set my terms. The car would be sold within the month, and the proceeds would go straight to me. The rest would be paid back in monthly amounts by Mike and Kristen out of their own wages. And Kristen would hand back the checkbook that night. “I will keep it,” I said. “I am not forgetful. I am a careful old man.”
She gave me the checkbook in the hall, with both hands, as one hands over a weapon. I put it in my jacket. Then I did something I had not planned. I took her face between my hands, as I had once taken the face of my own daughter, long ago, and said, “Kristen. You are young. You made a terrible choice. But you told me the truth when it counted, and that is worth more to me than fourteen thousand dollars.” She buried her face against my shoulder and shook.
The RAV4 sold in a week, to a young couple in Concord, at a loss of three thousand dollars. Kristen drove it to the buyer herself, and walked home, five miles, in the rain, because she wanted to. She came in soaked and cold and sat at my small kitchen table, and I made her a cup of tea. At last she said, “Ernest, I want to work for you.” I said, “For me?” She said, “At the sign shop. The new owners kept the name. I know the books, and I know the customers. Let me earn it.” I looked at her. “Come Monday,” I said, “at seven.”
She did. And she was good. Within six months she was managing the front office, and the new owners, who had not known what they bought, called me to ask who had streamlined the quotes. I said it was a former tenant of mine. By spring she had repaid nine thousand dollars. Mike took a weekend job teaching drafting at the community college. They no longer ate out. On Sundays, I climbed the stairs of the garage and sat in the kitchen with the children, while Kristen made soup, and I watched her stirring, with her sleeves rolled, and thought: she is a different woman. Not a better one. A truer one.
In June, my daughter in law handed me a note again. This time it was written in pencil on the back of an invoice, in her small, looped hand. It read: Ernest, rent is now four hundred. The new landlord says utilities are included. I laughed until I wept. Then I folded the paper and put it in my wallet, behind the photograph of Joan. I have it still. And on the back of the note, in my own shaky pencil, I added a line: Paid in full. She pretended to be cross when she saw it. But I caught her, afterward, standing in the hall, smiling at the floor.
